Why avoid gluten in your diet

September 6, 2017

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Believe it or not, about twenty percent of the world’s calories come from wheat. Wheat is easy to produce and is very comfortable and easy to store and ship. Wheat consumption kept on increasing at a fast pace from nineteenth century onwards. The consumption of wheat in the form of bread, noodles, and pasta might have dipped, but wheat still is a hidden ingredient in many of the products sold in a supermarket. Whether you like it or not, it is a part of everything starting from soups, gravies, sauces, spreads, dressing and even frozen vegetables. It is necessary to include gluten-free foods in your diet to have a healthy diet plan.

So what makes wheat this bad? Wheat is a grain and carbohydrates form a major part of the calorie source. Apart from carbohydrates, wheat also contains proteins in the form of gluten, wheat germ agglutinin, and amylase trypsin inhibitors. It’s proven that high consumption of the carbohydrates itself can cause metabolic problems like blood sugar, but none of these problems can be linked to the proteins present in the grain. Inflammation is the natural symptom if anything goes wrong with the gut. These proteins are gut irritants and are like splinters drilling into the gut.

Inflammation in gut eventually leads to increased intestinal permeability. The gut plays a very vital role in letting whatever the digested food is, into the blood stream and providing nutrients. All the toxic substances filtered are pushed the other way. Gluten stimulates the release of a protein called zonulin which increases the gut permeability, and more toxic substances are released into the blood stream. Gluten has another component called gliadin which when released into the blood stream can take down the immune system severely by molecular mimicry. Whenever a foreign body gets into the bloodstream, the immune system forms antibodies and attack. Gliadin has a structure similar to the body tissue. As a result, the antibodies start attacking human tissues too. Taking all these harms into consideration, it is best to have gluten free foods.